


Back to The Start

by mooniemurphy



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Because That's Hartley, But Not to CIsco, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hartley Rathaway Being a Jerk, Hartley Rathaway Needs a Redemption, M/M, Mostly to Barry, Savitar - Freeform, Season 3, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:31:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooniemurphy/pseuds/mooniemurphy
Summary: Luckily, things with Hartley seemed to be the same (the good kind of same, not the bad kind of same where he still wanted to kill Barry and hated Cisco and was sort of a supervillian who hadn’t been entirely in the wrong).(There's only one person Cisco can think to call when he needs help figuring out who Savitar might be.)





	1. Chapter 1

In reality, Cisco didn’t really know why he didn’t consult the team before he did it. Something in his mind just told him that, for now, this particular information, and this whole particular plan, was better kept to himself. Maybe because he wanted a little bit of time out of the team, out of S.T.A.R Labs; the drama was wearing his nerves down to the very core, and he couldn’t handle the consistent pressing in his brain of ‘everyone shut up, I need to get away from all of this right this second.’

 

So he didn’t talk to the team, even Caitlin, who he used to talk to about everything, because they’d been best friends once, but they didn’t really seem to be now. But Caitlin had her own thing, what with ice powers and Julian and Killer Frost and all of that, so Cisco wasn’t really mad, just a little upset and a lot lonely. And he didn’t really like talking to Barry about things right now, because they may have been okay-ish __now,__ after the Dominators and all, but there was a scar there with the time travel and Dante that wasn’t about to just fade. And Cisco had never really been close enough to Iris or Joe, and he didn’t really like HR, and Jesse and Wally were too much to handle, and he didn’t really know Julian.

 

So that left Cisco and just Cisco alone, doing things he was sure the team would question and doubt (because doubting Cisco was what the team did best, most of the time, even Barry, __especially__ Barry, and no, Cisco wasn’t bitter. Just honest). He couldn’t bring himself to care that they might not want him to.

 

He was surprised Hartley answered the phone.

 

See, Cisco didn’t actually know where Hartley had gone to after all the things had changed with the time wraith and everything. They’d talked a few times since then, including Cisco calling Hartley in a panic once he found about Flashpoint to see if things were still the same-- or if they were the same kind of same that they’d been before the time wraith. Luckily, things with Hartley seemed to be the same (the good kind of same, not the bad kind of same where he still wanted to kill Barry and hated Cisco and was sort of a supervillian who hadn’t been entirely in the wrong). And he’d helped them with a few things, but all over the phone, and even that had sort of faded into a lack of communication that was probably primarily Cisco’s fault, because of course Hartley wasn’t ever going to call him if he didn’t think Cisco actually wanted him to.

 

Whether Cisco wanted him to or not didn’t matter in the slightest; he didn’t care to look into whether he wanted to communicate with Hartley on a regular basis, because that added a whole layer of things he didn’t want to think about.

 

“Cisquito,” Hartley greeted over the phone, voice soft and a little sleepy, like maybe Cisco had woken him up. Which Cisco would feel guilty about, except that he knew that Hartley didn’t really sleep, anyway, so he probably hadn’t actually been asleep. The nickname that had once been bitter and cold and sarcastic was something bordering on affectionate now, and Cisco smiled in spite of himself.

 

“Hartley. I didn’t think you’d answer.”

 

“I’m always in the service of Team Flash,” Hartley replied with the barest hint of irony in his voice, and Cisco felt guilt twisting in his stomach for a moment before Hartley continued, “What do you need?”

 

Cisco crossed his tiny apartment to gaze out the window, wondering where Hartley was right now, because he certainly wasn’t in Central City anymore, and he hadn’t been for a while. Not that Cisco was keeping tabs on him or anything, he was just curious if Hartley was okay. They were kind of friends now, in spite of their not-so-friendly past.

 

The moon was ridiculously bright, and, though it was nearing three in the morning, Central City was wide awake. Cars bustled along the street below his apartment window, and he thought he could hear sirens in the distance. Something for the Flash, maybe? He didn’t know. It wasn’t his concern.

 

His only concern was Savitar, right now, and Cisco couldn’t think of anyone in the world who was better suited to help them figure out the mystery of the man behind the armor than Hartley Rathaway, who was, at the barest part of himself, a complete genius. Still, though, he didn’t want Hartley to think that the only reason he ever called was because they needed help; he __did__  actually care enough about Hartley to actually want to talk to him. He’d just been busy lately.

 

Cisco was probably a bit of a shitty friend sometimes, but then, he wasn’t actually sure if he and Hartley were really friends.

 

Turning away from the window, Cisco sighed heavily and forced a grin into his voice, even if it didn’t quite reach his face. “Can’t I call because I want to call?”

 

“It’s three am in Central City, Cisco, you’re calling me because something’s happened and you can’t sleep because you’re trying to figure it out. But you can’t figure it out. Hence the calling me thing. Which brings me back to my original question. What do you need?”

 

Hartley’s voice didn’t even sound as arrogant as it could have, and potentially would have, three or four years ago. There was a hint of smugness, like he was proud that he knew Cisco that well (and dammit, when did he start to know Cisco that well?), but all in all, he just seemed curious, albeit a little impatient as he waited for an answer to why he was being called at three am. Maybe later, depending on where in the world Hartley had escaped to.

 

“What time is it where you are? Did I wake you up? I can let you get back to sleep,” Cisco rambled, dropping onto the couch in the middle of his living room and staring at the TV that he hadn’t bothered to turn on when he got home a little after two o clock, frustrated and annoyed from working all night. He’d wanted nothing more than to sleep, but Hartley was right. He just couldn’t. Not until he figured out the mystery that Savitar was.

 

With a clear sense of annoyance, Hartley cleared his throat, his patience clearly starting to wear thin. “Or you could just tell me why you called.” He didn’t bother to answer the other questions, Cisco noted with a hint of his own annoyance, but of course he wouldn’t.

 

Cisco exhaled a sigh. He didn’t really like asking Hartley for help. It was a bit of a pride thing; they’d been rivals for so long that he didn’t like admitting Hartley might be able to figure out something that he couldn’t.

 

It was also a sort of not wanting to drag Hartley back to where so many bad things had happened to him thing, but he had already made the call, which meant that he was clearly worried enough about Savitar to be selfish enough to drag Hartley back to Central City and S.T.A.R Labs and all of those bad things. So there was nothing else to do but swallow his pride and actually ask.

 

“How fast can you get to Central City?” he asked quietly, gazing out the window again and watching the way the stars shined down on the city that he had grown to both love and hate more than any other in the world. “I need your help.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Hartley Rathaway was a genius. An actual, certified genius with more than one difficult, challenging college degree. He had honors, had worked with the most brilliant minds in the world. So what the hell was he doing? 

He had made a point to try and stay away from Central City, his parents, the family he’d left behind, the Flash team, and everything else that had happened in Central City. He had been trying to move on and forget; a certain engineer that was tied very thoroughly to his past had made that all but impossible. So here he was, back in Central City, like he hadn’t made a point to not be in this fucking city.

Even more confusingly, and possibly more infuriatingly, he found himself in Cisco Ramon’s apartment, a place he never thought he would end up. He and Cisco weren’t really friends; allies did not equate to any actual sense of liking each other, and yet, here Hartley was, all because Cisco had said he needed his help. There was something there in the subtext of that, but Hartley wouldn’t look too far into that; he knew he wouldn’t like the answer. 

It had been two days since Cisco had called him. In that time, Hartley had made the arrangements for a plane, and then a train ride into Central City. He’d been in Europe, literally oceans away. He’d suggested, wryly, over the phone, that Barry could have just flashed him to Central City in far less time than it took to fly from somewhere in the French countryside back to America, but Cisco had been adamant that Hartley keep it between them. Just for a while. 

In truth, it was probably a good thing that Hartley had come; Cisco looked ragged. There were lines beneath his eyes, and his hair was a tangled mess. He’d lost some of the enthusiastic youth that had worn Hartley’s nerves so thin when they were still co-workers, and, probably most shockingly, he wasn’t wearing any of the nerd attire that made Hartley want to burn the entirety of Cisco’s wardrobe and drag him shopping for something else. These clothes were closer to professional attire, and that was worrying.

“This is worse than I thought,” Hartley began as he walked into the apartment, which was cluttered and messy. “I was expecting that terrible shirt of yours. I must say, I’m shocked,” he drawled, cool and sarcastic and a little teasing because he knew Cisco knew which shirt he meant. 

But Cisco didn’t answer, even to joke back. Instead, he threw his arms around Hartley and tugged him into a fierce hug that left Hartley reeling. 

They aren’t friends, Hartley wanted to insist, but the words just didn’t come, because Cisco was clinging to him like a life preserver that was keeping him afloat. After a tense second of warring with himself-- he didn’t like being touched, and he was already wary enough-- Hartley moved an arm around Cisco and patted his back lightly. 

“Thank you,” Cisco said by way of explanation, and Hartley’s brows furrowed. “You didn’t have to come, and I probably shouldn’t have asked, but--”

“I couldn’t run away forever,” Hartley replied thinly as Cisco finally released him. He put a little space between them and moved to sit on the couch, pushing a couple blankets and books out of the way so he could actually sit down. “But it’s good to see you, too, Cisco,” he admitted after a moment of silence. “Though it begs the question, why am I here?”

There was silence between them for a moment, during which Hartley could hear far too much; the rustling in the walls that said the building probably had mice, the couple downstairs arguing over something relating to money, and the-- if he had to guess, there were at least four-- people having sex in the apartment upstairs. Above all, he heard Cisco’s heartbeat, fast and hurried. 

“Iris is in danger. She’s going to die, Barry has seen it happening, and we can’t figure out who wants to kill her because the person is from the future and knows everything about all of us and always seems to know exactly what we’re going to do. I thought if anyone could help me figure it out, it would be you.”

The words all kind of came out in a rush, and Hartley had to pick them apart and dissect it all before he could formulate a response. Exhaling a heavy sigh, he motioned for Cisco to join him on the couch, like he actually had to give Cisco permission to sit on his own couch or something. 

He was back in Central City to help save Barry Allen’s girlfriend. Something about it seemed like poetic justice, and it made Hartley grit his teeth to refrain from actually screaming at the sky like he desperately wanted to. He wasn’t a hero, except that when Cisco asked him to be, he seemed to do a really good job at being a hero. There was something in that subtext, too, and he wasn’t going to think about it.

“And your team doesn’t know you called me,” Hartley pointed out dryly, arching an eyebrow and listening to the way Cisco’s heart picks up a little with guilt. It made him feel a little smug for some reason.

“You’ve missed a lot, Hart. There’s a lot of reasons I wouldn’t want to tell them I asked for your help.”

“Fill me in on what I’ve missed, and then I’ll figure out something to help you with… all of this.”

It was probably the stupidest choice he had made in quite a while, and for no reason other than it was Cisco that had asked, and he seemed to owe Cisco quite a lot. Cisco had believed him when he’d warned him about Wells, Cisco had helped him escape the pipeline, and then come to him for help regarding the Reverse-Flash/Wellsobard, and, once they’d stopped competing in every aspect, Cisco had actually apologized for their past, and for treating Hartley like he was a bad guy, when Hartley was, in fact, a bad guy, and had never brought himself to apologize in return. 

He had meant to kill Barry Allen that day, and Cisco and Caitlin, too, if he had needed to, and maybe he still felt like there was something to make up for in that. No matter how much he ended up helping them, he’d probably never escape the image of Cisco nearly dead on the ground because of something he had done. It was guilt, nothing more or less.

Or maybe something more. He couldn’t analyze it.

Cisco explained, slowly, and with an excruciating amount of detail, what Hartley had missed in the year since he’d left Central City, and at the end of it all, Hartley had one take away: “Is Barry Allen ever going to learn that time travel won’t fix all of his problems? Honestly, it’s like he’s asking for someone to kill him, and he’s going to end up bringing it on himself. Can he handle any situation without fucking it up more?” 

“Oh, you have no idea,” Cisco replied coldly, and Hartley didn’t think he’d ever heard Cisco sound like that, even when he’d hated Hartley more than he’d hated black licorice (quite a lot). Hartley stared at him, analyzing the lines on his face and the beat of his heart, tuning out the other noises of the apartment complex.

“You didn’t tell me the whole story,” Hartley accused bluntly, and Cisco winced. 

“Dante’s dead,” he finally replied after a moment of terrible, terrible silence. Hartley’s heart seemed to drop in his chest. He knew very little about Cisco’s older brother, which basically pertained to the fact that they hadn’t really gotten along through most of their life, but Dante was still Cisco’s brother, and Hartley didn’t have to look at him to see the heartbreak on his face.

He looked, anyway, and suddenly, the lack of light in Cisco’s eyes, and those lines on his face all seemed to make sense. Before he could talk himself out of it, he wrapped an arm around Cisco’s shoulders to pull him into a hug. He didn’t apologize, because Hartley knew better than anyone that ‘sorry’ didn’t make losing someone any easier, but physical comfort sometimes did. He’d put up with the touching for the moment, because Cisco’s need was greater than his own, at least at that very second. 

He wondered when he’d gotten so soft. It was becoming a problem.

Finally, the quiet and the closeness got to be too awkward for either of them to handle (they still weren’t really friends, after all), Cisco pulled away and wiped a couple stray tears off his face, and Hartley deliberately looked away, because he didn’t want to see Cisco cry. He stared at the ‘S’ in the Star Wars poster on Cisco’s wall and waited, drowning out every stray noise, for Cisco to pull himself together. He did, clearing his throat, and Hartley deemed it safe to look again.

“So,” he began after a moment of quiet tension, “tell me what you know about this Savitar.”


	3. Chapter 3

The problem, Cisco realized from the moment they started talking about it, was that what they knew about Savitar wasn’t much. He showed Hartley what they’d found about the Philosopher’s Stone, and they’d both grinned at Hartley’s automatic Harry Potter joke. Times like that were the times that he and Hartley could get along without actually fighting, because those were the things that they had in common, among other things.

 

“So he’s a god from the future,” Hartley surmised, staring at the notes Cisco had amassed on what they knew about Savitar. It really came down to about one page of things that they’d managed to figure out, and barely even that. They didn’t have any information.

 

“He claims he’s a god from the future. I understand that this isn’t really a lot for you to work with.”

 

“No, this is next to _nothing_ for me to work with,” Hartley replied, dropping the paper onto the coffee table in front of Cisco’s couch. He sat back, relaxing the rigged posture he’d had for the past twenty minutes, and removed his glasses so he could rub his eyes with the back of one hand. He looked tired and drawn, hair unusually tousled, like he hadn’t bothered to style it. Maybe he hadn’t, now that he didn’t think there was anyone he needed to impress.

 

Cisco liked this Hartley better. He was a little less put together, wearing a hoodie and jeans instead of his usual suits and button-downs. He was almost relaxed; as relaxed as Hartley could be when Cisco knew that he didn’t really trust this city, probably didn’t really trust _him._ Still, Hartley was here, and that seemed to say enough, so maybe he actually could relax with Cisco.

__

“I tried to find more, but he’s a speedster. Even Barry can’t keep up with him.”

 

“One day, Barry might _actually_ be the fastest man alive,” Hartley griped with a roll of his eyes, putting his glasses back on. “Honestly, though, there’s no more information here that I can sift through that you haven’t already over-analyzed. Clearly, this is someone that knows the team, which narrows it down to the few speedsters that have worked with your team; Barry, Jay Garrick, Zoom, and--”

 

His voice cut off, and Cisco grimaced. “Thawne.”

 

“Yeah,” Hartley answered flatly.

 

“And now, Jesse and Wally,” Cisco added, quickly, to get them past that shared wall in their past, that dark spot they both wanted to get over and away from and never quite seemed able to.

 

“I can probably take a few of those out of the equation. Zoom is dead, I’m sure Thawne wouldn’t put on a whole new gimmick, and I’m not sure why Wally would ever want to kill his sister. Not that that takes him off the list completely, but right now, your grand suspects are Jesse, Jay Garrick, and Barry--”

 

“Why would Barry want to kill Iris?”

 

“Why would Jay Garrick?” Hartley shot back without missing a beat. “Or Jesse? It doesn’t make sense. But you’ve also got to entertain the possibility that it’s someone your team doesn’t know yet. He-- or she-- is from the future, right? That leaves a whole host of people you don’t even know.”

 

Cisco groaned, collapsing back into the couch and rubbing his forehead. He could feel the impending headache that was already forming, and they’d barely even started. “Fuck,” he stated simply, because that seemed to sum it up nicely.

 

“Yeah,” Hartley agreed, pulling his cellphone from the pocket of his hoodie. “Well, I’m calling for takeout, and then we can work on this more. Or you can sleep, you look absolutely exhausted, and I can go get a hotel and work on this more alone and we can talk tomorrow--”

 

“Or you can just stay here. My couch isn’t that uncomfortable, and you don’t really have to get a hotel.”

 

Hartley stared at him blankly, and Cisco shrugged, already uncomfortable having Hartley looking at him like that. He didn’t think it was really such an odd request; they were kind of friends, and it was Cisco’s fault Hartley was even here. He wouldn’t make Hartley have to pay for a hotel because Cisco had dragged him back to Central City for what was amounting to no reason at all.

 

“Well, I’m still ordering takeout,” Hartley replied with finality, and Cisco smirked. That had been an awfully easily won battle. He’d expected Hartley to argue or fight, and he was pretty glad that he hadn’t. “And then you can sleep,” he added pointedly, giving Cisco a sharp look.

 

“You can sleep, too,” Cisco replied, one eyebrow arching into his hairline. “You think I can’t see that you look dead on your feet?”

 

“I have coffee for that.”

 

“Coffee is not a substitute for sleep.”

 

Hartley grimaced, rolling his eyes. “You can’t make me--”

 

“Hartley, shut up.”

 

Surprisingly, Hartley did, mouth snapping shut. He exhaled a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Fine,” he finally allowed, shaking his head once. “Food, and then sleep, because apparently we both need it.”

 

Cisco grinned triumphantly, snagging Hartley’s cellphone from his hands with a wiry grin. “Yeah, we do. And takeout is on me.”

 

He pretended he couldn’t see Hartley about to argue with him, as was their custom, dialing the number for the Thai place down the road. He ordered enough takeout for a small army, because he was pretty sure that Hartley didn’t actually eat as much as he should. But it wasn’t like Cisco was really one to talk, so he didn’t say much about it. The food was delivered, and they ate in silence, watching old episodes of Doctor Who on Cisco’s TV.

 

It was only once they’d finished eating and Hartley was helping box up the rest of the food that he spoke again, slow and unsure. “Cisco, I have an idea that might help, but I don’t know how well it’ll work. Is there any way you could get me some sort of audio file with Savitar’s voice?”

 

Cisco blinked and frowned, hands stilling on a box of takeout as he thought about it. Hartley did have highly enhanced hearing. Maybe his hearing could detect something that Cisco and Barry and the team couldn’t, but Cisco didn’t have an audio file that had Savitar’s voice.

 

But he was pretty sure he knew the best way to get one.

 

“Yeah,” he replied quietly. “Yeah, I can do that.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Hartley had asked for an audio file of Savitar’s voice, he hadn’t meant that he wanted Cisco to vibe Savitar and record him about to kill Iris. There was a lot in the recording that Hartley didn’t want to hear, up to and including Savitar actually killing Iris and Barry screaming afterwards, but he’d already subjected himself to having to do this, so he wouldn’t complain. Much.

The key issue was, though, that Hartley didn’t know what he was supposed to be listening for. If it was someone that they knew, then yeah, Hartley could probably pick out that voice under whatever modulators Savitar used to alter it. But if it was someone from the future that the team hadn’t met yet, Hartley would be just as lost as he already was.

Still, Hartley subjected himself to doing what he had to do, which included locking himself in Cisco’s apartment-- because he was staying with Cisco now, apparently, and putting the recording on a sound loop with headphones in, and opening an editor to play around with the audio. Cisco, luckily wasn’t there when he got to work, because Cisco himself had to actually go to work. And it was a good thing, because Hartley found himself getting annoyed and angry enough that he frequently threw markers or pens across the room.

It took him about three hours of stripping the audio to the barest point, and there was something familiar in the voice, but this person was clearly from the future. The technology used to modulate the voice was more than even Hartley’s advanced hearing could get past, and at the barest point of it, there was still something altering the voice. So, as familiar as it sounded, there still wasn’t an answer. He was beginning to think that Cisco calling him was going to have no positive outcome whatsoever.

Cisco returned to the apartment around eleven pm, and Hartley was still sitting in front of his laptop, though he’d made no further progress on this than he had hours before. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes with one hand before putting them back on, blinking at Cisco tiredly. 

“How’s it going?” Cisco asked tentatively, and Hartley’s eyes narrowed.

“How do you think it’s going?” he replied bitterly, and Cisco held up a hand in surrender, holding out a container of Chinese takeout in his other. 

“I think you need a break,” he replied. 

“I’m not hungry,” Hartley responded, and Cisco arched an eyebrow, shutting the apartment door behind him. 

“Have you eaten today?”

Hartley grimaced. “I never expected you to be the dad-friend,” he said instead of answering, closing the program on his laptop and shutting it with a thud. 

“Are we friends?” Cisco asked as he walked to the kitchen table, opening the takeout container, and Hartley half-turned to watch him, unsure of how to answer the question. 

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Cisco looked up, and his expression was so unreadable that Hartley was almost made uncomfortable by it. He looked away, busying himself with putting his laptop back in the backpack he’d brought it in and zipping it shut.

Sometimes, when Cisco looked at him that way, Hartley wondered if all Cisco saw was the person Hartley had been however many years before., like nothing had changed. Things had changed, and Hartley himself had changed, more than he cared to admit. He wasn’t still that person, as much as he sometimes wished he was. It was easier than being made to care, anyway. 

“Anyway,” Hartley continued when the silence had become unbearable, because it was very clear that Cisco wasn’t going to answer him-- he thought he knew what Cisco was thinking; Hartley wasn’t here because they were friends, or because he cared, but because he felt guilty. And that was at least partially true. He did feel guilty, and he did have a lot to make up for, but he cared, too. More than he had ever wanted to. “All I can tell you, nearly definitively, is that it’s someone we know. Because I can recognize the voice, at least distantly, but the technology used is slightly more advanced than I can figure out. But only slightly,” he added bitterly, because he was a genius, damn it.

“That narrows the suspect pool down considerably,” Cisco replied, dishing the Chinese onto two plates. He handed Hartley one as he walked back to the couch and sat down, and Hartley took it with a silent nod of gratitude, his stomach giving an appreciative rumble that gave away his former lie of not being hungry.

“Jesse, Jay Garrick, Wally, Barry, Thawne-- which I still suspect is nearly impossible-- , and Zoom, whom I believe is dead.”

“So, Jesse, Jay, Wally, and Barry. And not a single one of those people makes sense.”

Hartley hummed his agreement as he took a bite of his food. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, because he’d been thinking about it all day, and his head was throbbing, and he was tired. “I need to put this out of my mind for the night, because I don’t think my brain can handle any more of this.”

“Alright, sure,” Cisco agreed easily, easier than Hartley would have expected. He’d figured this would have been another thing that Cisco put all of his time into until they finally figured it out, like the Particle Accelerator, especially considering his friend’s lives were on the line, but he seemed pretty content to just let it go at that. He leaned down and pushed a couple t-shirts out of the way, holding up a video game case. “What do you say?”

Hartley glanced at the title with a frown. Mario Kart. That was most definitely a terrible idea, but something about it was sorely tempting. “I’m not really the video game type, Cisquito,” he answered in spite of that, and Cisco rolled his eyes. 

“Pretend you are. Come on.” He leaned forward to flip the game console on and grab both controllers, passing one to Hartley, who sighed and set his food aside to take the controller.

“I warn you that this is an awful idea,” Hartley muttered as he watched the game start up. “We couldn’t get along when we were working together; this is infinitely more competitive than anything we’ve done at S.T.A.R. Labs.”

Cisco snickered as they selected their players. He chose Luigi, and Hartley rolled his eyes before selecting Yoshi. “Just play, Hartley.”

And of course, probably just to piss Hartley off, Cisco would select Rainbow Road. And then they were playing a game, and Hartley found himself having more fun than he had expected he could have, laughing as he threw shells in Cisco’s path, and as both he and Cisco swore each time they fell off the road.

It was fun. Hartley hadn’t had fun just to have fun in so long. There was a nice release of all the stress that both he and Cisco had been carrying, and in spite of the fact that yeah, the game was competitive, neither of them seemed to have any real hostility towards the other. That definitely made for a nice change of pace, given their shared past.

“What?” Hartley asked innocently in response to the look Cisco was giving him, leaning forward to set the controller on the table.

“You said you weren’t the video game type,” Cisco answered accusingly, and Hartley fought a smug smile. “You just kicked my ass.”

“Et ego mentitus,” he replied simply in Latin, and Cisco rolled his eyes. 

“Alright, alright. Respect,” he replied, leaning forward to turn the game console and TV off. “You win. I will concede my defeat gracefully.”

“There is a first time for everything,” Hartley quipped.

“Try to be decent winner, Hart,” Cisco replied, but he was grinning, and Hartley couldn’t fight a small smile in return. These were the times that he actually felt… okay. He and Cisco were actually getting along, and Cisco was… 

He didn’t let himself think that thought, think that Cisco was actually cute when he was smiling and happy. He didn’t let himself think that Cisco was great when he didn’t hate Hartley, and that Hartley felt… good, when they were getting along. He didn’t let himself think it, because thinking it made things complicated. He didn’t want to analyze his feelings; feelings made the job harder, and he was here because he had a job to do. Not because he wanted a date. So he shut that particular thought down before it had time to form. It wasn’t going to happen.

“Go to sleep, Cisquito,” Hartley said instead, and Cisco nodded slightly. 

“Yeah, you get some sleep, too. I’ll help you with all that tomorrow,” he motioned vaguely to Hartley’s bag, where his laptop was, and Hartley sighed heavily. Right. They had a job to do. That was all. 

Tomorrow would be right back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol, I have no idea what I think of this chapter. Sorry. The next one will hopefully be better, and then there's actually gonna be some action and Barry finding out that Hartley is working with Cisco, so fun times.
> 
> Also, comments feed my ego, and I'm a ho for attention, so comment and stuff. Let me know what you think, good or bad!


	5. Chapter 5

“Can you take people into your vibes?” Hartley asked out of the blue as he and Cisco were listening to the audio from the vibe for the umpteenth time in the past hour, and Cisco paused in his annoyed rubbing of his temples to give Hartley a look.

 

“Why?” he asked suspiciously. Yes, he could, he already knew, but he didn’t know why Hartley would want to go into this particular vibe with him. There was nothing more audio-wise that Hartley could analyze, and he didn’t think Hartley actually wanted to __see__  Savitar murder Iris.

 

“I want to see it, see if I can see something.”

 

“I’ve watched it a thousand times. There’s nothing to see.”

 

“And I have better observational skills than you,” Hartley remarked. “We’ve already proven this to be true. Stop arguing with me.”

 

Cisco scoffed and rolled his eyes. There was the slightest chance that Hartley was right, loathe as he was to admit it. “Fine. Fine, yes, I can take you into the vibe with me.”

 

Part of him didn’t really want to go back into said vibe, because watching Iris die and seeing Barry scream his head off about it was not Cisco’s idea of a good time, but there was always a chance that Hartley would catch something that he’d missed. Hartley always had a better eye for the small details, while Cisco’s perceptive on the bigger picture was a lot better, and that was why they’d actually made a very good team on the Particle Accelerator project, even if they had been nearly unable to get along during it. So maybe it was a good idea to take Hartley with him.

 

Sighing, he stood up and retrieved his goggles, motioning for Hartley to stand with him. He noted that Hartley didn’t look particularly comfortable with it, either; there were drawn and tired lines etched across Hartley’s face, and he was frowning, brow furrowed. Cisco didn’t like this Hartley as much, the work-focused and tense version as opposed to the relaxed version he’d managed to see for a few hours the night before. When Hartley laughed, or even just smiled, it gave him a whole new look. Younger, happier, warmer. It was nice to see, even if it was only temporary.

 

The vibe, as always, left Cisco feeling nauseous, but he stood firm, allowing Hartley to watch the entire thing as they stood together in the blue-tinted vision. He could feel Hartley’s tension next to him, feel the way it radiated off of him, and feel the way Hartley flinched as Savitar shoved his hand through Iris’s chest.

 

“Jesus,” he breathed, turning his head. “Okay. I’ve seen enough.”

 

Cisco grimaced and brought them out of the vibe, catching Hartley’s arm when he stumbled and holding him steady. “Hey, you good?” he asked, more concern in his voice than he thought would be possible when it pertained to Hartley Rathaway, and Hartley took a deep breath.

 

“I’ve had dreams,” he replied, “dreams, where Thawne did that to me. After I found out he was the Reverse Flash, after I saw him attempt to do it to Barry. I mean, he clearly never hated me enough to do it, even when I threatened his plans by figuring too much out, but--”

 

Cisco frowned, rubbing Hartley’s back lightly. “Yeah, he did it to me, actually. In a different timeline that Barry erased. I still remember it, it’s actually how I got these powers.”

 

Hartley was silent for a very long time, and then finally, he sighed. “Probably the only time I’ll ever thank Barry for using time travel.”

 

“What about the fact that time travel is why we’re friends?”

 

Hartley blinked at him, straightening slightly and carefully composing his face. “Your life is more important than our friendship, but yes, I suppose that, too,” he agreed after a moment. “That was entirely useless. I didn’t __see__  anything. None of it makes any sense…”

 

He trailed off as the panic alert on Cisco’s phone went off, and Cisco jumped, hurrying to snatch his phone up off the table. It was from Barry, and Cisco bristled automatically. “It’s Barry--”

 

“Savitar?” Hartley asked, moving to look over Cisco’s shoulder.

 

“Maybe. I have to go--”

 

“Yeah, go.”

 

Cisco nodded, pulling his goggles back up and focusing. It only took a second before he had Barry’s location pinpointed, and had a breech to it opened. He heard what sounded like a stunned gasp from Hartley, and he had to fight a little smirk, because he had kind of forgotten Hartley didn’t know the full extent of his powers. But he didn’t have time to explain. He jumped into the breech, and for a moment, the whole world went blue.

 

The scene he landed upon was instantly terrifying, because yes, it was Savitar, but it wasn’t just Savitar. Killer Frost was there; Killer Frost in all her white hair and badass ice powers, and then there was Barry and Jesse and Wally standing across from them, because Killer Frost had sided with Savitar, __what?__  But he didn’t have time to wonder about that, because then Killer Frost was attacking Barry, and Savitar was laughing and __what the hell was happening here?__

 

He didn’t have time to figure it out. He shot a vibrational blast at Caitlin-- Killer Frost-- his friend, his best fucking friend, what the hell-- and suddenly all eyes were on him.

 

“Caitlin--”

 

“That’s not my name,” Caitlin snapped back at him in that voice, that voice that was tinted just this side of evil, just this side of wrong.

 

“Yes, it is. You are not Killer Frost, you are Caitlin Snow, and--”

 

His voice was cut off with a groan as a blast of ice flew his way and hit him in the lower leg. He went down, his leg buckling beneath him as the cold started to spread.

 

“And I’m starting to get really sick of this sympathetic blah, blah, blah,” Caitlin droned, and okay. Okay, Cisco could second that. He sat up a little straighter, raising his hand from where it was on his leg to shoot another vibrational blast at her.

 

This was Caitlin, his best friend, and he was fighting her because he didn’t have a choice anymore. And Barry, Wally, and Jesse were fighting Savitar, but they weren’t fast enough, even all together to catch up to him, and it seemed like Team Flash was going to lose this one, and Cisco was furious.

 

He had lost too fucking much; he was not going to lose anything else. Not today, not with Hartley there working his ass off to figure out who Savitar was. Not with so much left that needed to be said. Fury coursing through him, he stood up, sending another vibrational wave in the direction of Killer Frost, strong enough to knock her off her feet.

 

It felt like maybe, maybe he was going to win. But before he could act upon this temporary change of momentum, Savitar was in front of him, and one heavily armored hand lifted him off of his feet by the front of his shirt.

 

“Cisco Ramon,” Savitar said, in that disturbingly distorted voice, and Cisco’s entire body flooded in fear. “I wish you weren’t essential to my plans.” He raised his free hand, and Cisco flinched, because it was vibrating right in front of him, and Cisco was having dark flashes to a past, to a timeline erased. No. Not again, this wasn’t going to happen again. “If only I could just--”

 

His voice was cut off abruptly, and all Cisco could register was the thud as his back hit the ground. He groaned in pain, holding the back of his head where it had hit a little harder, and, with a superhuman effort, he pushed himself up onto his elbows to try to figure out what had just happened.

 

Savitar was gone. So was Killer Frost. Jesse was lying, nearly unconscious, with Wally holding her and making sure she was still alive, and Barry was standing between where they were and where Cisco was, out of breath and looking shocked. It didn’t take Cisco long to detect the cause of that shock, and of Savitar’s sudden disappearance.

 

“Hartley,” he greeted with a heavy sigh. The secret was out now.

 

“Are you okay, Cisco?” At Cisco’s nod, Hartley nodded once and glanced at the other members of Team Flash, tilting his head slightly. He adjusted his gauntlets absentmindedly, clearing his throat as if he was actually feeling awkward about this confrontation. But of course, he probably wasn’t, because he probably didn’t really care if Barry and Wally and Jesse knew that he was there.

 

“Hello, Barry,” Hartley finally said, tilting his head slightly. “Long time, no see.”


	6. Chapter 6

Hartley disregarded Barry’s stuttered greeting and bout of-- was it rage or annoyance in his face? Hartley didn’t know; frankly, he didn’t care, either. He walked past Barry and extended a hand to Cisco to help him to his feet. With a groan, Cisco took his hand and allowed him to haul him up.

“You weren’t supposed to show up.”

“And you weren’t supposed to almost die,” Hartley quipped back, “but here we are.” Cisco gave him a dark look, and he smirked in response, letting go of Cisco’s hand. “Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?”

“Well--”

“Why are you here?” Barry interrupted. “Cisco, did you call him?”

“Yes,” Cisco answered as Hartley turned to stare at Barry, an eyebrow raised.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Shocker,” Hartley muttered, rolling his eyes. “Did it occur to you that Cisco is a grown man that doesn’t need to tell you every single person he decides to spend his time with, especially considering that he had every reason to not trust you right now? And I’m actually here to help you. Well, no. I’m here to help him. Inadvertently, that means I’m here to help you.”

“Can we argue back at S.T.A.R. Labs?” Cisco asked over Barry’s flustered stammering, and Hartley nodded. 

“Probably better, yes. You have more to tell me,” Hartley replied, something accusing in his tone, but, really, it didn’t surprise him that Cisco hadn’t told him about Caitlin and Killer Frost. That seemed like another loss that Cisco wasn’t ready to have to handle, and now he was having to handle it.

“He’s not helping us--”

“Yes,” Hartley snapped. “I am. It’s not your call to make, as this-- Savitar, Cisco’s brother, Caitlin, Killer Frost-- all of this is on you. I don’t have to answer to you, and frankly, I wouldn’t. You’re so far down on my list of important priorities that I’m beyond the point of giving a damn. You can choose to accept my help, or I can continue working from Cisco’s apartment. Either way, you’re not shutting me out of this. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. Can we go now?”

Barry looked like he was going to argue again, but Hartley turned away from him, because he was so not doing this right now. Wally ran ahead, flashing off with Jesse in his arms, and after a moment, Barry flashed off, as well, leaving Cisco and Hartley standing alone.

“Caitlin?” Hartley hedged, and Cisco’s eyes darkened slightly.

“Flashpoint,” he explained, and Hartley grimaced.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

Hartley nodded and sighed quietly, glancing away. “Right. Well, actually, Savitar’s sudden appearance has given me a little more to work with.” He analyzed the surrounding area for a moment until he found what he was working for. “The security cameras. Can you get a copy of the footage from this fight, and erase them before anyone else can get a hold of it?”

“When we get back to S.T.A.R. Labs, yeah,” Cisco agreed. He fixed his goggles and then took a deep breath, and, for the second time in the night, Hartley watched as he opened a-- breech, he thought he’d heard Cisco call them. It was honestly one of the coolest things Hartley had thought he’d ever seen, even if he wouldn’t admit that. And then he held his hand out, and, frowning, Hartley took it, and they stepped through the breech.

When they stepped out, they were in the cortex in S.T.A.R. Labs. Hartley shook his head, a little stunned by the experience as a whole, and he couldn’t say anything beyond, “Wow,” to which Cisco just gave him a smug smirk.

“I know, right? Alright. You wanted the footage of that fight.” Together, he and Hartley moved to the desk, where Hartley, pointedly ignoring the dirty look he was getting from Barry, watched as Cisco pulled up the city’s security footage, sifting through it until he found what he was looking for.

“What are you doing?” Barry finally asked, and Hartley glanced up.

“I’m going to analyze this footage. Maybe I’ll be able to figure something out about who your mystery speed god is,” he answered, taking the drive that Cisco handed him after he downloaded the footage to it. “Is there anything else you want to yell at us about, or am I free to go, Barry Allen?”

“What’s your problem, Hartley?”

“My problem,” Hartley replied sharply, slamming his hand down on the desk, “is that you and I are not supposed to be enemies, and that I want to like you. I want to be your ally, but you continuously make very, very stupid, annoying, and irresponsible decisions that don’t just effect you. You changed the entire timeline, which made Caitlin a supervillian, got Dante killed, and is potentially going to get Iris killed, and you did it for yourself. And you call me the villain, and you act like I don’t belong here? Your selfishness far outmatches mine, and I’m the one that got thrown in the pipeline. That, Barry, is my problem. I’ll see you at your apartment,” he added quietly to Cisco, ignoring the dirty look Barry was giving him, and the nearly amused one he was getting from Cisco.

Hand tightening on the flash drive that Cisco had given him, he turned on his heel and walked out of S.T.A.R. Labs. He had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like always, let me know what you think! I'm an author, which means I need constant reassurance.


	7. Chapter 7

“You should have told us that you called Hartley,” Barry pressed, and Cisco sighed, digging through his desk to find a bottle of Ibuprofen .His head was still pounding from the fight, and from Barry and Hartley’s ensuing argument. He’d been pretty happy about what Hartley had said, actually, because it had been things that Cisco had wanted to say since he found out about Flashpoint. He didn’t really want to take sides in this whole thing, but he was seeming to find himself on Hartley’s side, anyway.

“Yeah, I could have. And I should have, except that I knew how you’d react, and it was also nice to just not have to deal with everything for a while. Hartley’s-- he’s changed,” Cisco replied. He popped two Ibuprofen into his mouth and grabbed a bottle of water to wash it down.

Truthfully, working with Hartley over the past few days had been something along the lines of simple, which he hadn’t expected. But the truth was, when they weren’t being forced into competition against each other, he and Hartley just sort of meshed, and it had been a nice change of pace from the tension seeping through S.T.A.R. Labs as of late. He hadn’t forgiven Barry, and now, with Caitlin gone, he couldn’t bring himself to even want to.

Plus, Hartley was actually… Cisco didn’t want to really think about it. Hartley was actually being sweet (for Hartley), and he’d defended Cisco against Barry, and he’d saved Cisco’s life. And aside from that, they’d been getting along, and Cisco wasn’t blind to the fact that Hartley was good looking, nor was he oblivious to the fact that they were both currently single. But feelings would just make things complicated.

“We’re supposed to be a team, Cisco--”

“I know, Barry. We’re supposed to be a team. But please, please, tell me one time in the last year that you’ve thought about this team before you made a decision? I called Hartley to help you. Stop acting like I asked, I don’t know, Leonard Snart for help without consulting you. Oh, wait, you’ve done that, too.”

Barry exhaled a heavy sigh. “Alright. I deserve that. Just… tell me what he finds, alright? Maybe Hartley will be able to figure out something that we couldn’t. Has he found anything so far?”

“Not really,” Cisco hedged, unwilling to tell him about the small things that Hartley had noticed that might have been something. “But, I will tell you if he does. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sleep this headache off.” He waved to Wally, who’d been standing in the doorway from the cortex and the medical room, where Jesse was asleep. He wondered, distantly, in the back of his mind, where H.R. and Joe and Julian were, but he decided he really didn’t need to know. H.R. would be even more of a headache, and he didn’t need that right now.

Hartley was on the couch on his laptop when Cisco got home, and Cisco opened his mouth to say something, but Hartley cut him off with a hand raised. “Come here,” he said, motioning Cisco over, and Cisco frowned, moving to sit beside him, close enough that their thighs touched. If Hartley noticed, or cared, he didn’t comment. “Okay, watch this.”

Cisco squinted at the video, which was the footage from the fight, but he wasn’t sure exactly what Hartley was indicating. “What am I supposed to be seeing here?” he asked, and Hartley scoffed.

“Your observational skills really haven’t improved, have they?” he retorted, looking at Cisco, and Cisco rolled his eyes, but when he looked at Hartley, he became very aware of exactly how close they were sitting. There was silence for a minute, and then Hartley looked away abruptly, clearing his throat. “Watch Savitar.”

He slowed the video down to frame by frame, which was still barely enough to see Savitar or the other speedsters, but Cisco thought he was getting part of what Hartley was trying to indicate. “He doesn’t touch Barry,” Cisco noted.

“Exactly. Cisco, I have a theory, but to test it is going to be dangerous.”

Cisco’s stomach flipped, and he looked at Hartley again. “How dangerous?”

“You, me, and Savitar kind of dangerous. We can’t even tell Barry what we’re going to do, especially if this theory is right.”

“That’s… really dangerous. Okay. You don’t think--” 

“I don’t want to tell you what I think, in case I’m right. That could get you killed.”

“Hartley…”

“No, Cisco.”

Cisco hesitated for a moment, because he hadn’t wanted to put Hartley in this sort of danger, but it occurred to him that Hartley was willingly putting himself in danger. They were sitting very close to each other, and there was something unreadable in Hartley’s eyes, and there was a buzz of something. Cisco didn’t know what exactly it was. He didn’t want to think about it. 

It would be so easy to figure it out. To figure out what this was, what was building between them. He wondered if Hartley even noticed. It was impossible to not notice, right? He felt-- it all felt… 

But feelings made things complicated, so he looked away and he shifted back on the couch to put some distance between them. He pretended he didn’t see a flash of… something across Hartley’s face as he moved. Disappointment, maybe? Or maybe that was just false hope.

Hartley was in danger enough without getting… involved with someone on the Flash team, and Cisco needed to be able to focus, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he spent too much time thinking about whatever this was.

Whatever it was.

“Alright,” Cisco agreed after a long silence. “Let’s do it.”


	8. Chapter 8

Hartley didn’t sleep that night. His mind was preoccupied with other things, and by other things, he didn’t only mean Savitar. Cisco was, and not for the first time, at the forefront of Hartley’s mind. He thought he had gotten over… whatever it was. Whatever had formed before, when they were working on the time wraith. Even before then, back when they’d worked together the first time, and Hartley had been so fucking jealous of Cisco, but not just jealous. There’d always been something, and he thought he’d been over it. 

He wasn’t over it.

But he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t think about that, because he knew. This was dangerous. They were all in serious danger. And the theory Hartley was going to have to test was going to put him, and Cisco, in even more danger. And if Hartley was even the slightest bit preoccupied with whatever feelings he may have had for Cisco, they were both going to die.

His lack of sleep definitely wasn’t going to help his focus. He got maybe three and a half hours before he realized he most definitely wasn’t going to sleep anymore, and then he got up and started a pot of coffee, because Cisco, bless him, always kept coffee in his home. Probably because, like all overly preoccupied scientists, he needed it to survive. It was barely six am, but, within minutes of the coffee pot starting to brew, Cisco was shuffling out of his bedroom. His hair was tousled, and he was wearing overly-long pajama pants and a shirt that was at least two sizes too big. He was, frankly, almost too adorable for his own good, and Hartley wanted to swear. Loudly.

He took the pot of coffee and poured two mugs, sliding one across the counter to where Cisco was standing. “Thanks,” Cisco muttered, voice tired. He hadn’t gotten any more sleep than Hartley had, and it showed in the tired lines under his eyes, the shuffle of his feet.

“Yeah. Why are you awake?”

“Same reason you are, probably. Couldn’t sleep. Were you thinking about this stupid thing that we’re about to do with this theory of yours?”

“Among other things,” Hartley admitted, taking a drink of the dark roast and humming contently. Coffee was sort of his crutch when things seemed to be falling to pieces.

“What other things?”

Hartley grimaced. “Things.”

Cisco raised an eyebrow over his coffee mug, taking a long sip of it. “Care to elaborate, oh Mr. Mysterious?”

“Cisco,” Hartley began, but cut off as Cisco moved closer to him, leaning against the counter beside where Hartley was leaning against it. “What are you doing?” he asked instead, raising an eyebrow. There was tension between them, like there had been the night before, and he couldn’t put a name to it. He didn’t want to try to put a name to it. He didn’t want to be thinking about this.

“What you were thinking about. I was thinking about it, too.”

“Cisco, I can’t--”

“Yeah, you can.” Cisco set the coffee mug on the counter, and, in response, Hartley’s fingers clenched tighter on his, like it was some kind of shield. He shifted just enough to try to put some space between them, but there wasn’t a lot of space to put. He didn’t want to do this. 

No, that wasn’t true. He definitely wanted to do this. He didn’t think he could do this. They had a job to do, they had other things that they had to focus on. If his lack of focus got Cisco, or even anyone else on the Flash team, hurt, or worse, killed? He had enough with this team that he had to make up for. He couldn’t let that happen. 

But then Cisco’s lips were on his, and any thought of what was at risk here was far out of his mind. Hartley shifted just enough that he could set the coffee mug down on the counter, and then his hand flailed in the air for a moment before finally settling on Cisco’s shoulder. He leaned into Cisco, kissing back softly, because it was Cisco. It was Cisco. He had never dared to imagine that this could happen. They’d hated each other for a good part of their past, and then they’d been tentative friends, but this, this had never even been…

Hartley couldn’t let this happen. It didn’t matter how much he wanted it to. He absolutely couldn’t let this happen. Not yet. Not now.

He flattened his palm against Cisco’s shoulder and pushed him back gently. “Cisco, I can’t.” He saw the flash of something-- pain, maybe-- as it spread across Cisco’s face, and he hastened to add, “No, you’re right. I want to. I definitely want to. You don’t know how much, alright? But this… I have to be focused. So do you. And we definitely don’t help each other focus. So, I’m going to… get a hotel, and after we figure out what this is, with Savitar, what’s happening there, we can figure out what’s happening here.” He motioned between them by way of explanation.

Cisco bit his lip, and Hartley wanted to lean in to kiss him again, but he refrained. “Okay,” Cisco finally sighed. “You’re right. You’re always right, and it pisses me off.”

Hartley laughed, soft and a little breathless, because what the fuck was happening, even? What was his life? “Finally, something we both agree on. Work on a way to get Savitar’s attention, and I will finish what I need to test this theory. The sooner we figure that out…” He couldn’t help it this time, leaning in and kissing Cisco softly, the barest brush of lips. “The sooner we can figure that out.”

Cisco grinned, and Hartley couldn’t help but grin in response, grabbing the coffee mug off of the counter. He grabbed his laptop bag from where it was sitting by the couch and left the apartment so he could get a hotel. Now, more than ever, he was definitely motivated to figure out who Savitar was. He had added incentive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About time, right?


	9. Chapter 9

Cisco and Hartley met very, very early in the morning two days later. He hadn’t seen Hartley since Hartley had moved into a hotel room, and there was a particular tension buzzing between them, but Cisco didn’t comment on it. Because Hartley was right, Hartley was usually right. They had to focus, or someone was likely to get hurt. Hell, Jesse already had, though she was recovering in the medical room just fine.

Hartley looked tired, like he hadn’t slept at all the past few days. There were heavy bags under his eyes, visible even behind the thick-rimmed glasses he wore. His hair was tousled, and despite the gauntlets he was wearing, he wasn’t in typical Piper gear. He was wearing a dark hoodie and a pair of jeans, looking decidedly less put-together than usual, but it suited him.

“Did you sleep?” was Cisco’s greeting as Hartley approached him. They were in the middle of a clearing in a wooded area just outside Central City, and the sun was just peaking over the horizon. Cisco clutched a coffee cup in his hand, which he offered to Hartley.

“Yes,” Hartley replied simply, though he took the coffee cup and took a drink from it before passing it back.

“Actually sleep or Hartley sleep, because those are two different things.”

Hartley raised an eyebrow, his lips twitching slightly, as if he was about to smile. “You already know the answer. We could have done this later in the day, you know. Seven am seems a little early.”

“It was your suggestion.”

“Fair. I’m going to be out of sight when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named shows up--”

“I wasn’t aware Savitar suddenly became Voldemort,” Cisco cut in, and Hartley scoffed, though he was smirking slightly.

“Our lives are so much more fun if we relate them to Harry Potter,” he replied, and Cisco had to give him that one. He looked at the sun as it was rising, exhaling a small breath, and then Hartley continued quietly, “Anyway. I’ll be out of sight, which means you will be facing Savitar alone.”

“He said I was essential to his plans. He won’t kill me.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t exactly comfort me,” Hartley replied with a grimace, and, though Cisco knew the situation was serious, he couldn’t help but grin a little.

“Are you worried about me?”

Hartley shot him a look that was as venomous as some of the looks he’d given him when they’d hated each other, but it didn’t hold any of the hostility that it used to. “I’m not going to answer that. Here.” He passed Cisco an ear piece. “It’s directly tied to my hearing aids. I’ll be able to hear what’s going on, and we’ll be able to talk to each other.”

Cisco took the delicate piece of equipment from him and slipped it into his ear, nodding. “Alright. You should go. Show’s about to start.”

Hartley opened his mouth to say something, hesitated for a few seconds, and then shut it again. He nodded once, squeezing Cisco’s shoulder lightly, and then walked away. Cisco faced the opening to the clearing, flexing his fingers. He was prepared for a fight, but he thought that it wouldn’t come to that. At least, he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t. He hoped that being part of Savitar’s plan meant he wouldn’t be gruesomely murdered, but it didn’t offer him any more comfort than it had offered Hartley.

“How did you get Savitar’s attention, anyway?” Hartley’s voice came through the ear piece Cisco was wearing, and it took all of his focus not to jump. 

“I didn’t,” he answered, staring at the opening of the clearing with determined focus, though something like dread was settling in his stomach. “I got hers.”

Caitlin stepped into the clearing, and, from what Cisco could see, she looked like she’d done a little too much shopping at Game of Thrones Etsy meets Hot Topic, but he didn’t care to comment on it. She crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly, and Cisco forced a cocky grin onto his face.

“Hey, Caitlin. Where’s Drogon?” He couldn’t quite help himself with the GoT reference, because really, she had the whole Mother of Dragons hair going on, but Caitlin didn’t look amused. In his ear, Hartley snorted quietly.

“My name’s not Caitlin.”

“Yeah, it is, but we don’t need to have this argument right now. Where’s your boss? He and I have a discussion to have.”

“What discussion is that, and why shouldn’t I just ice you?”

Cisco rolled his eyes. Internally. He didn’t quite have the nerve to do it externally, because she probably would actually freeze him. “I’m essential to his plans, right? Well, I’m here to offer whatever assistance he needs. We all have reasons to get back at Barry, don’t we? Consider me officially Dark Side.”

“Cisco,” Hartley muttered in his ear, and Cisco didn’t answer. He just hoped that Hartley trusted him on this. Before Caitlin could respond to Cisco’s claims, there was a flash of lightening, and Cisco was flinching back from the heavily armored face that was suddenly in front of his.

“Cisco,” Savitar droned, a disturbingly distorted echo of Hartley’s voice in his ears. “Offering me your help. How interesting.”

Whatever Hartley was going to do, he needed to do it fast, because Cisco was nothing close to a decent actor, and he wasn’t going to be able to keep this charade up for long. Especially when all he wanted to do was run. He barely refrained from doing just that.

“Barry’s no friend of mine,” he lied, staring into the space where the man-- or woman’s-- eyes would be behind the mask. 

“You are not a very good liar, Cisco Ramon,” Savitar said, and then--

And then things after that were a blur. Cisco remembered being lifted off of his feet for a moment, but before he had any time to be afraid, he was on the ground, and Hartley was in the clearing with them, shooting vibrations from his gauntlets. Savitar screamed-- at least, Cisco thought that was what he was doing. It was what it sounded like. And then, in a gust of wind, he was gone, and so was Caitlin. In another gust of wind, Barry and Wally were standing over him, looking between him and Hartley in disbelief.

“What the hell were you two doing?” Barry demanded, voice too loud in the quiet of the clearing. 

“How did you know we were here?” Hartley shot back, holding out a hand to help Cisco up, even as he glared in Barry’s direction. Cisco took Hartley’s hand and pulled himself up.

“There was an alert from Cisco’s phone,” Barry answered, and Cisco grimaced. He hadn’t sent one, but it might have gotten sent when he hit the ground.

“It wasn’t from me,” he said. “We had it under control.”

“Yeah, clearly,” Wally replied. “Hartley, what did you do to get him to run away like that?”

“It was a lucky shot,” Hartley responded smoothly. “If you’ll excuse me, I need Cisco to work on a theory. I’ll tell you when I know more.” He grabbed Cisco’s arm and dragged him away, and only once they were a fair distance from Barry and Wally did he stop, looking at Cisco directly, and there was something like panic in his eyes.

“You lied to them. What did you do? Why do you look so scared?”

“That blast I used was set to the frequency I found when I was looking for Barry’s medical records,” Hartley told him in a low voice, and Cisco’s stomach dropped. He didn’t need to hear Hartley say it, but Hartley continued anyway, “Cisco, Savitar? Is Barry.”


	10. Chapter 10

“What the hell?” Cisco said, and Hartley sighed. 

“I don’t know.”

“No, seriously. What the hell?,” Cisco repeated, throwing his hands up in an overly-dramatic gesture that had Hartley rolling his eyes. “Barry? Savitar is Barry? That doesn’t make sense--”

“Cisco,” Hartley cut in, firm and quiet. “I don’t know. There’s a chance,” he hedged, though his voice made it clear that he thought very little of this chance, “that I input the wrong frequency and it was a happy coincidence.”

The look Cisco gave him was cold and flat, quite similar to Eobard Thawne- era Cisco and Hartley, as opposed to the now friends-and-potentially-more era Cisco and Hartley. They hadn’t talked about that part yet. Hartley really wanted to talk about that part, but it was more dangerous now than it had been before, so he definitively did not talk about that part. “And what exactly are the odds of that, Hartley?”

Hartley blinked, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Approximately point three percent.” Because he was smarter than that, because he checked all his data approximately fifty-seven times before he’d walked into that clearing, because he wasn’t going to miscalculate and get Cisco hurt. His miscalculations in science-- in life-- had gotten the entire city hurt before. Even now, knowing that that had always been the plan, he wasn’t willing to fuck something up like that again.

“That’s what I thought,” Cisco replied. “You over-analyze all of you data until it’s perfect, you didn’t put the wrong frequency, which means that’s Barry. Savitar is Barry.”

They were in Hartley’s hotel room, because he’d left his laptop there, and all of Hartley’s information was still in his laptop. He’d gone over it four times already just since they’d made it to the hotel, checking again and again for anyway this was wrong, but he’d found nothing. Because it wasn’t wrong. He already knew that, and he was just as confused as Cisco was.

(And, to clarify, checking scientific data had not been part of Hartley’s plan when he got Cisco into his hotel room, but here they were.)

“Barry from the future,” Cisco added, humming quietly. “So what happens between now and then that makes Barry want to kill Iris? His future wife, the love of his life?” Cisco mused, sitting next to Hartley on the hotel bed.

“True love is a fickle thing,” Hartley snorted, somewhat bitter. True love had always been a bad thing for him. He didn’t expect Cisco to know why that was, and he didn’t offer an explanation. “Maybe she cheated on him.”

Cisco gave him a dark look. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. There’s a lot of things that could have happened, and we can sit here and speculate for hours, but without more information, we’re never going to know. The only thing we now know for certain is that whatever move we make from here, Barry? Your Barry? He can’t know. Anything he finds out, that Barry finds out, and all of our plans, everything we try to do to stop Savitar, is thrown out the window.”

Cisco sighed, and Hartley echoed it. They were screwed. Knowing who Savitar was wasn’t at all helpful if they didn’t have any way to actually stop him. Yes, Hartley did have a way to quite literally sheer Barry’s organs apart from the inside out (he’d apologize for keeping that particular piece of information at a later date considering it was probably going to save their lives now), but that didn’t mean a lot when Savitar also had Killer Frost, and Hartley and Cisco couldn’t use their fastest speedster to fight. Wally or Jesse, maybe, but they were both very untrained and too enthusiastic, sped into fights without thinking, much like Barry had just a few years back when he was fighting Hartley.

“What’s your suggestion?” Cisco finally asked after a few long moments of silence, and Hartley shifted slightly, almost automatically moving closer to the other man. Usually, he would have liked the fact that Cisco trusted his opinion on the matter, but that was a lot of weight put on his shoulders, and honestly, he wasn’t even sure he had any answers.

Still, he was smart. He knew how to analyze situations. And he knew that he had the ability to stop Barry. Therefore, he had the ability to stop Savitar. If everything went according to plan, and Hartley could actually hit Savitar with the sonic blasts, anyway. But when was the last time anything had ever gone according to Hartley’s plans?

He wasn’t optimistic.

“I can stop him. Him,” he repeated, enunciating the word carefully, and ignoring the feeling in his gut that said that this was a terrible, terrible plan, and someone was going to get hurt. “But--”

“But you can’t stop her,” Cisco finished for him.

Caitlin. Hartley had no way to stop Caitlin, especially if all of his focus had to be on Savitar.

“I won’t make you fight her,” Hartley forced out, grimacing again. Caitlin and Cisco’s closeness had always sort of made him feel like he was swallowing sandpaper, even if they’d never dated or been together. It had been clear, in the beginning, that Cisco had had feelings for Caitlin, but she’d been with Ronnie. “I know she’s your best friend.”

“Yeah. She is. But we need to stop Savitar, and she works for Savitar now, and suddenly, all of that makes a lot more sense, so I’ll do it. I guess it’ll be you and me taking on the big bad this year.” Cisco nudged Hartley’s shoulder lightly, and, in spite of himself, Hartley couldn’t stop a quiet laugh. 

“Would you have put your life in my hands before, Cisquito?” Hartley mused, quiet and curious, his eyes scanning Cisco’s face for any misgivings.

“Before? When you were super evil and trying to kill me and my boss and my best friends--”

“To clarify, I only wanted to kill Barry--”

“Semantics,” Cisco muttered, rolling his eyes. “No. Back then, I wouldn’t have put my life in your hands. But this isn’t back then, and right here, right now, I know what you bring to the table. So, yeah, it’s going to be you and me, and we’re going to take on a psychopathic murderer version of one of my best friends, and a frost queen frigid bitch version of my other best friend, and we’re going to win.”

Hartley laughed again, the doubt in his chest easing just a little at Cisco’s words. Cisco trusted him. And they could do this. Together.

He hoped.

Shaking his head, he sighed. “I guess it’s just another Tuesday in Central City.”


	11. Chapter 11

Hartley spent a lot of time in S.T.A.R Labs after that. He told Cisco that he was just working on upgrading the gauntlets so they could be fail-proof against Savitar, but Cisco noticed the way Hartley sometimes seemed to just watch, his eyes flicking between Barry and Iris and just analyzing. He was trying to figure out motive, Cisco was sure, but he never asked, and Hartley never clarified. He didn’t need to.

They didn’t talk about it. They both made a point to not tell Barry what they knew about Savitar now, because they couldn’t make any sense of it, so they didn’t expect him to be able to make sense of it, either. It made for heightened tensions between Barry and Hartley, because Barry knew Hartley knew something, and Hartley refused to budge on what that something was.

Aside from the tension with Barry, though, Hartley seemed to get along with everyone else on the team, even HR. That meaning had gone only marginally as well as Cisco had assumed it would, though it had taken Hartley about thirty seconds to realize that HR was nothing like Wellsobard. He seemed to wear on Hartley’s nerves a bit, though, so Hartley tended to stick to Cisco’s lab and ignore everyone except Cisco himself, and Julian.

Cisco walked into the lab early one morning, and Julian and Hartley were already there, huddled over something. Cisco wasn’t sure what; Julian had asked for Hartley’s help on it the day before, but neither had informed him what exactly they were working on. 

“Will it work?” Julian was asking, and Hartley exhaled a sigh. Cisco refrained from making his presence known for a moment, curious about what exactly it was the two were working on, and wondering if he should be jealous over this sudden close friendship. No, he wasn’t going to be jealous. Of course not.

“I don’t know. The only way to be certain would be to test it, but to test it would be to risk potentially dying, as she’s the only one we could test it against. The general theory is that it could stabilize her powers and bring back Caitlin, but there’s a certain mysticism behind those powers that science can’t really account for.” He straightened, setting whatever it was they had been working on back on the desk and exhaling another heavy sigh. “You know I know you’re there, right, Cisco?”

Cisco flushed a little, because, no, he actually hadn’t known that. “How did you--”

“I can hear your heartbeat,” Hartley replied, turning to face him. “You could have just asked”

“What are you working on?” Cisco asked, if only to spite Hartley, who rolled his eyes in response.

“Something to neutralize Caitlin’s powers,” Julian answered, holding up what looked like the power-dampening cuffs Cisco had created weeks before, only slimmer, shining with an electric blue light.

“I took a look at the cuffs you made,” Hartley told him, as if reading Cisco’s mind. “It’s the same design, and technology, just a little more focused. I didn’t change much, I just altered a few small things. There’s no promise it’ll work--”

“But it’s something,” Cisco finished with a nod. “Better than nothing.”

“Yes. And I actually need to talk to you about something,” Hartley added, almost as an afterthought, and Julian seemed to take the cue that it was time to leave, nodding to both Hartley and Cisco in turn and then exiting his lab. “This is for you,” Hartley told him, handing him the bracelet with a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t just let you go face to face with her without something. Maybe no one has to get hurt this way.”

“Thanks,” Cisco replied, looping his finger through the bracelet and staring down at it. “You know, we could both die trying to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“So maybe we should talk about what this is before we potentially die?” Cisco hedged carefully. He didn’t want to push Hartley too far and cause some kind of distance between them, but he also didn’t want to die not knowing what there was going on with them.

“Cisco--”

“I know. We’re both in a lot of danger, but, okay. We kissed. We both basically admitted that we like each other, which, yeah, that’s weird to me, too, because I used to hate you, but that’s changed, because we’ve both changed, and I think… I don’t really know.”

“Cisco, stop talking,” Hartley sighed, rolling his eyes, though his expression was bordering on something fond, and the corners of his mouth had twitched up slightly. “I know what you mean. I do like you. Part of me always has, and now, that seems to be… maybe… an option--”

“Wait, you mean back during the Particle Accelerator…”

“Yes,” Hartley admitted with a grimace. “Shut up.”

“I thought you and Wells--”

“We were.”

Oh. Silence fell then, tense and heavy, and Cisco immediately felt bad for even bringing it up. He hadn’t thought this was how the conversation would go when he asked about whatever this was; it had definitely backfired on him, and he wasn’t sure how to dig himself out of this hole.

“Ah. Um. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Hartley replied thinly. “You didn’t know, and I don’t care. That’s the past. You wanted to talk about right now. Right now, yes, I like you, and I wouldn’t object to kissing you again, and in no time between now and beating Savitar am I going to go developing feelings for someone else. Can that be enough for right now?”

Cisco considered that for a minute. It was probably as close to a promise as he was going to get from Hartley, and that was definitely saying something. Still, he did have one concern, and he couldn’t stop himself from voicing it.

“Are you going to run off when we beat Savitar? You were hiding out across the world when I called you.”

“Maybe you should give me a reason to stay,” Hartley replied with an air of finality. He smiled, though it barely reached his eyes, and pressed past Cisco, exiting the office without another word. Cisco exhaled a quiet, tired sigh. He supposed that he probably should have expected that reaction, and suddenly, it gave him motivation. 

They were going to figure this out. 

Sitting at his desk, Cisco set the bracelet down and went back to work on the problem he’d been trying to figure out since they’d discovered Savitar’s identity: How were they going to plan any attack against Savitar without Barry finding out, or without Wally, Jesse, Barry, Iris, and everyone else getting involved? He didn’t have an answer to that particular question, but he was working on it, and he didn’t doubt that he was going to figure it out.

Figuring it out involved working on where they were hiding. Savitar wasn’t so easy to locate. He’d tried every way he’d known to figure out Savitar’s location, even going so far as attempting to vibe off Barry to see if he could find anything-- the information he’d gained (nothing) hadn’t been worth Barry’s questions about it. 

So he was moving on to another method. Finding the changes in atmospheric pressure had calculated a general location of where Killer Frost might be, but it hadn’t allowed him to find a particular location, and just walking into a ten block radius ready to fight Savitar and Killer Frost was a formula for getting killed. But thanks to Felicity and Hartley’s updates of their satellite system, Cisco could get a better look into that ten block radius and hopefully, he prayed, get an actual location on where Killer Frost was hiding.

With luck, Savitar would be there, too, and he and Hartley could end this.

They never really got that lucky, but he was going to choose to remain optimistic. Cracking his knuckles, Cisco turned on his computer and threw himself back into his work. 

It took him fifty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds, but he wasn’t counting. Most definitely not. Felicity probably would have been able to do it faster; hell, Hartley probably could have done it faster, but Hartley was busy, and Felicity was in Star City, so Cisco was actually pretty proud of himself. Staring at the computer screen, he cracked a small smirk, though a small thrill of terror ran through him.

“Ah. Gotcha.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Are you sure--” Hartley began again, cutting off when Cisco gave him a very sharp look. They were near the warehouse where Cisco’s algorithm had suggested Killer Frost might be hiding out, and they’d been monitoring it for approximately three hours and forty-one minutes, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen seconds. Not that Hartley was counting every second that neither Killer Frost or Savitar had appeared. He wasn’t that anxious. 

“I’m sure,” Cisco replied, yet again, like he hadn’t had to tell Hartley that about four times already, and Hartley could have apologized for doubting him, but he wasn’t going to. When they’d been waiting this long and hadn’t seen even a single icicle suggesting that the people that they were looking for were in this building, Hartley was starting to get annoyed, and he definitely had his doubts.

“I could look--”

“Hartley. Shut up.”

Put off, Hartley shut his mouth, leaning back in his seat in the car Cisco had borrowed for this, claiming that a S.T.A.R. Labs van like he usually drove would look too conspicuous. Hartley didn’t disagree with him in that respect; he disagreed with him in the respect that just sitting outside the warehouse (a stakeout, Cisco had exclaimed) was the best course of action. In his opinion, staying here was only more likely to get them hurt. 

“We could just go inside,” Hartley pressed instead, and Cisco turned just enough that he could glare.

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“It’s better than sitting here,” Hartley argued, pushing his door open. He had his gauntlets and was (mostly) ready for a fight; he didn’t want to sit around doing nothing anymore. If they had a chance to stop Savitar and Killer Frost, he was going to take it.

“Hartley--” Cisco began, but he didn’t get much else out before Hartley had shut the door in his face. He heard the door slam from the other side of the car, and then Cisco was following after him, muttering curse words alternating between Spanish and English and apparently forgetting that Hartley spoke both.

“I can hear you,” Hartley informed him.

“Good,” Cisco replied. “Because you’re an idiot.”

“My IQ might disagree with you,” Hartley responded, not bothering to listen to whatever Cisco had to say in response, instead pushing the door of the warehouse open. 

There was a chance-- and only a chance, that was all Hartley was going to admit to-- that he had been wrong and Cisco had been right. As soon as they walked into the warehouse, Hartley could feel the cold that would only come with Killer Frost’s powers, and he could hear-- something. He couldn’t identify for sure what that something was; it was distant even to his advanced hearing, but there was some noise there that informed him they weren’t alone.

“They’re here,” Hartley muttered, voice low, and he could hear Cisco scoff (he could also hear Cisco’s heart rate pick up and knew that, confident though he may have been trying to sound, he was anything but.)

“Yes,” a disturbingly distorted voice droned, “we’re here.” 

Faster than Hartley could blink, Savitar was in front of them in that same armor, which proved that he didn’t yet know that Hartley and Cisco both knew who he was. Caitlin was just behind him, walking into the room with a roll of her eyes.

“It’s like you two want to die,” she droned, gazing at her fingernails, and Hartley barely refrained from rolling his eyes. He was beyond over psuedo-goth Caitlin and her attitude; he much preferred the uptight princess Caitlin Snow was to Elsa-meets-Cersei-Lannister levels of evil. He hoped Cisco would be able to bring her back from that. Maybe. 

“Do you want to waste time talking?” Hartley muttered to Cisco. “Because I really don’t want to waste time talking.”

His gauntlets were already rigged; if Savitar still had any of Barry left in him, he’d fall for that same trick all over again. Hartley was counting on that. He raised his hands and shot one blast that Savitar dodged, easily, but that was fine, because Hartley hadn’t been trying to hit him. Just like that, the fight was on, and Hartley quickly lost track of Caitlin and Cisco. Which unnerved him, but he didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, as all of his focus was on making sure he didn’t get a vibrating hand through his heart. 

Even from some number of years in the future, with cool future armor and whatever knowledge he had managed to gain, Barry was still entirely predictable, because the first move he made was to disarm Hartley. Without his gauntlets, Hartley was ‘useless’, Barry seemed to think. Apparently, he didn’t realize that Hartley was a certified genius and a master tactician. 

It took Savitar all of two seconds to realize the mistake he had made in disarming Hartley, but by that point, the trap was already set off and the gauntlets were admitting the frequency Hartley had discovered all those years ago, slowly sheering Barry’s organs apart from the inside. Hartley took a moment to find his bearings and check on Caitlin and Cisco; that fight seemed to be as well off as they’d hoped-- Cisco looked damaged, but not anything fatal, and he had the power-dampening device that Hartley created on Caitlin’s wrist. He didn’t know how much good it was doing; she was unconscious, but she still had the Mother of Dragons hair, which meant she was still Killer Frost, not Caitlin.

That was an issue for another time, though. Hartley had more pressing matters to take care of.

“Are you okay?” he asked Cisco, who nodded. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, stepping forward to slip the second power-dampening cuff over Savitar’s armor, hopefully cutting off his power long enough that Hartley could get the answers he needed. 

He kept his gauntlets close, just in case, and turned them off. After a moment of silence, Savitar stopped writhing in pain and and screaming, and Hartley stood up a little straighter. “Time for you to answer some questions… Barry.”


End file.
